As the network bandwidth increases, the video streaming quality also improves, thereby increasing the bandwidth usage of media servers. To reduce the bandwidth load on the media servers, many software developments start to focus on P2P technology, such as, BitTorrent (BT)-like or mesh network.
For example, an U.S. patent document on instant replay and time-shifted playback provides a multimedia content delivery server to store all the live video streams to provide instant replay, and just as time-shifted, the previous video may be played back any time. Through a central control mechanism, the terminal end transmits the time-shifted point via the set top box to the server of the central control mechanism, and then the server responds with related information or data. When the number of users increases at the terminal end, more servers and more bandwidth are often required to maintain service quality.
Another U.S. patent document disclosed a technology of display of content and automatic pause and resume of playback. The technology is applicable to client device and/or ahead-end, or network operator. The technology is based on type of event, originator, and type of current display to assign priority to event for providing variable response levels. The technology requires maintenance of central control mechanism, which may lead to system bottleneck.
Yet another U.S. patent document disclosed a real-time multicast peer to peer video streaming platform. As shown in FIG. 1, system 100 provides a distributed storing live stream. Content provider 102 uses a computer connected to a public network 104 and wants the chunks of content stored in the cache can be distributed to the nearby peers 108-114. The content may be, such as, from a camera 106 or other data source. Content provider 102 and nearby peers 108-114 may execute on respective computer a software or hardware streaming agent 116 to facilitate the distribution of the chunks of content to other peers. This architecture requires a server for capturing or storing the data of the program. If the program is live, the server may suffer the insufficient data space problem. On the other hand, the higher the number of the audience is, the server may suffer the insufficient bandwidth problem, may lead to delayed or even lost frames. This technique did not provide peer to peer load-balancing mechanism.
Yet another U.S patent document disclosed a scalable media distributed streaming technology. In coupled P2P networks, peer streamer may provide a receiver-driven P2P video streaming, wherein peer lists can be searched like distributed hash table (DHT). This technology did not describe the use of load-balancing mechanism through DHT.
Yet another U.S patent document disclosed a distributed cache algorithm and system for time-shifted, and live, peer-to-peer video streaming. As shown in FIG. 2, video source is connected via a network link 221 to a packet transmission network 220. Client/peer 230 is also connected via respective network link to packet transmission network 220. Distributed cache system 200 shares the video streaming via the distributed cache among the peers, where each client/peer j of client/peer 230, 1≦j≦N, needs to register the availability of own information content to a search server 260. The stream source search also needs to communicate with search server 260, and uses a fixed bit rate stream via the video cache policy of initial playback position (IPP) and live-stream position (LSP) to obtain a better search efficiency. This method still may need to maintain one or more search servers, and IPP or LSP only divides video streaming into two major categories without coordination mechanism among peers to achieve load-balance.